This section introduces aspects that may be helpful to facilitating a better understanding of the inventions. Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is in the prior art or what is not in the prior art.
Power monitors or light detectors are useful for a variety of situations. For example, many optic components include on-chip power monitors that monitor input optical power. One such component includes a coherent receiver. Two optical signals are typically required for a coherent receiver to operate. One of those optical signals may be referred to as the data-carrier signal and the other may be referred to as the local oscillator signal. The power of the local oscillator signal typically may be significantly higher than that of the data-carrier signal.